More Gymnastics

The girls continue to be obsessed with playing gymnastics, although it's not always clear to the innocent observer what exactly they're doing.  In fact, I had no idea why Madeleine was thumping and leaping around the living room, repeatedly falling on her face, until she quietly announced to herself, "Next up is bars," and climbed onto the couch to gracefully execute her bar routine.  Even though we haven't watched the "McKenna Shoots for the Stars" movie in several days, Madeleine remains inspired by the American Girl character, imagining herself in McKenna's place on the various gymnastics apparatuses.  She did, however, take a temporary break from her McKenna obsession to pontificate upon the most recent American Girl movie we watched, "Chrissa Stands Strong," reflecting on the plight of one of Chrissa's friends, who is devastated to find out that the secret of her family's homelessness has been leaked around school.  Running to me suddenly in the middle of her pretend play, Madeleine announced, concerned, "Mom, nobody didn't want to know that her name was HOMELESS."  I can see she truly understands the story line.

All was going well with Madeleine/McKenna's gymnastics routines until I began trying to video tape her.  Julia, envious of the spotlight Madeleine was getting on video, suddenly decided to rip off her own clothes and throw on a leotard, leading Madeleine to feel the sudden urge to wear her ballet dress.  It wasn't long before we were on track towards a tantrum over needing to wear a tutu. The end result of two separate videos, as we needed to temporarily halt production and do a quick costume change behind the scenes.





Incidentally, on a completely unrelated topic, Madeleine decided to interrupt my lullaby singing at bedtime this evening to say, "Mommy, I wanna talk about QUAW-QUEE CLARK."

My children are not weird at all.